Fund finally ready to release money to desperate family
The Nemamilwes have been waiting for GEPF pension payout since 2012
For the past six years the Nemamilwe family has been battling to make ends meet while they have hundreds of thousand of rand collecting dust at the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF).
But that might soon be a thing of the past as Betsie Groenewald of Client Services has now handed over their file to the payment division of the fund to expedite payment.
Natasha Nemamilwe, 25, first wrote to Consumer Line complaining about the manner in which their claim had been handled since 2012, after the passing of her father.
She pleaded with the GEPF to pay monthly allowances to support her and her two siblings.
Nemamilwe said she was forced to drop out of college because her mother could not afford to pay her tertiary fees with what she was getting at a local Safari lodge where she was employed at the time.
“Since June last year after she was retrenched we had to rely on my grandmother’s grant for survival,” she said.
Nemamilwe said her father had served in the police service for 18 years at the time of his death.
The family applied for the payout of his pension as her father was the breadwinner. They were given forms to fill out by the pension fund administrators.
The siblings submitted all the required documents together with their banking details on time but each time they inquired about the progress they would be asked to resubmit the documents.
She said her father had another child out of wedlock and were working hand in glove with the mother of their half sister to ensure there were no hiccups in their claim.
“To avoid any confusions and complications, we worked with her and submitted everything together,” said Nemamilwe.
They had given the pension fund 12 months to investigate if there were any other dependants who needed to be party to the claim, as required in terms of the Pension Act, she said.
They have been making follow-ups since 2014 without luck.
Visiting the GEPF head office had not helped either, even though government officials helped to re-start the process in 2016 after Consumer Line’s exposure, they still did not process their claim, she said.
Nemamilwe said she felt disappointed by GEPF’s lack of strictness and care because of the way the officials dealt with their claim.
“I dropped out of school in 2013 and all these past years I had hoped that it will work out so I could go back to school once the pension pays out, but it has only been disappointments,” she said.
She has applied to study law at the South African Law School in Pretoria, but has not submitted her application forms as she does not know if she could raise the R23 000 required for fees.
“Please help, we can’t go over into another year without any progress. People working for the government need to help people like us, we need to be their priority,” said Nemamilwe.
When Consumer Line approached GEPF for comment again last week, they did not know how far the claim had progressed.
Mack Lewele, the head of communications at GEPF, however, told Consumer Line that the documents for the claim had not been submitted to the fund.
‘‘ People working for government need to help people like us, we need to be their priority
“I even asked one of our officials from Limpopo to go to Nemamilwe’s home and help them with the process [of filling up forms]”, he said.
Oblivious of the fact that the claim was languishing in their offices since 2016, Lewele said the forms had been submitted to the SAPS instead.
He said the GEPF would now fast track the claim.